Kukla's Korner Hockey

Assuming the Isles don’t believe they’re close enough to a Cup to pay the high price required to land Guerin or Tkachuk, I expect they’ll leave the major moves until the summer and try to do something on a smaller scale to boost the offense now.

“I remember asking Scotty Bowman for a trade when I was with the Red Wings. He was understanding, but then told me that it was out of my control, that they liked me and that I was a young player they had high hopes for.
“I felt that I wanted to be moved because I wanted to play on a more regular basis. Ever since I asked for that trade, I’ve been traded a lot.”
Last year, Sillinger enjoyed his finest season statistically with 32 goals and 63 points in 78 games with the Blues and Predators.

There are plenty of people in the world who don’t and who never tire of telling the NHL that it has to ban fighting. Even Canada"s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, had an editorial to that effect a few days ago.
But for the most part, the people who want to ban fighting aren’t hockey fans. As a result, hockey people say, not unreasonably. “Why should we ban fighting? Those people don’t come to games anyway.”

The Edmonton Oilers have activated right winger Fernando Pisani and defenceman Daniel Tjarnqvist from the NHL Injured Reserve List.
To make room on the roster for Pisani and Tjarnqvist, the Oilers have placed centre Petr Nedved on the NHL Injured Reserve List and assigned left winger Zack Stortini to the Hamilton Bulldogs of the American Hockey League.

Is Guerin headed to the Islanders? According to Dwayne, the NYI are close…

Following up on a report that came from Barry Melrose on WFAN in NY here. Barry stated the Islanders were close to a deal for Guerin….I talked to a source that confirmed the Isles as one of the final two teams.

According to numerous folks Melrose never said Guerin was close to going to the Islanders. You can listen to the interview via WFAN... Guerin never mentioned!
Uh-Oh, E4, error on the 2nd baseman. One other thing Dwayne, why are your post timestamps off by an hour, trying to get a jump on other sources?

added 8:25pm, See the explanation of the timestamp situation from Chris in the comments of this post.

added 9:21pm, Dwayne now has updated saying he “didn’t hear the report on WFAN myself.” You can follow along if you’d like with the original link.

So who are these “sources” who claim various deals are imminent, possible, dead, pending, or whatever? I don’t know that either, but they’re wrong far more often than they’re right. If you’re an employee of an NHL club, and you decide to leak some info to an “outsider” so you can appear to be “in the know,” well that’s the expressway to becoming an ex-employee of an NHL club.

The Toronto Maple Leafs will be without the services of one of their top defencemen for the next two weeks.
Pavel Kubina will be out for two weeks after suffering a finger injury in Thursday night’s game against the New York Islanders.

So, what’s going to happen come Tuesday afternoon as 3 p.m. hits? Will the landscape of the NHL be changed radically heading into the stretch drive of the regular season? Or will the status quo remain?

At this point, your guess is as good as mine. Uncertainty always dominates Deadline Day. Prices rise. Prices fall. Teams take risks. Teams play it safe. This season, the consensus is teams are looking to make improvements, but those holding on to the key players, almost universally unrestricted free-agents-to-be, are driving such a hard bargain that standing pat may become the theme of the day. Or like a flashing blue-light special, prices will plunge and the buying frenzy will be on.
Here is Ice Age’s attempt to figure all this out.

continued… Lists the teams that we can expect to be involved in deals over the coming days and reasons why

We have an incredibly tech savvy audience,” said Keith Ritter, the NHL’s senior VP for new business development, “and one of the things that’s pretty apparent is technology is this huge freight train, and you can’t just jump in front of it, because that ends up getting you crushed. You have to ride it.”...
Ritter must be sensitive to some owners’ concerns YouTube video will eat into the live TV product and / or infringe on league and team Web sites, but Ritter insisted that has not occurred.
“Everything we’re doing is additive,” he said. “We’re not looking to take away from people watching live hockey, both in person and on TV. That’s what we want them to do.”

While Wilson and the Sharks thought Ruutu should be suspended for the boarding major and game misconduct he received at the 19:03 mark, Hawks coach Denis Savard defended his player on Friday and said a suspension would be the wrong call by the NHL.
“I don’t think he should get a suspension, just (by) the fact McLaren kind of turned a bit,” Savard said. “Ruuty just plays hard. That’s the way it is. He’s just a physical player. He went in there to finish his check.”